Welcome to Bergen! by Gunnar Staalesen

Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen, Norway in 1947. He made his debut at the age of 22 with Seasons of Innocence and in 1977 he published the first book in the Varg Veum series. Twelve film adaptations of his Varg Veum crime novels have appeared since 2007, starring the popular Norwegian actor Trond Epsen Seim, and a further seies is being filmed now. Staalesen, who has won three Golden Pistols (including the Prize of Honour), lives in Bergen with his wife. There is a life-sized statue of Varg Veum in the centre of Bergen.

I am not sure if the tourist industry in Bergen is entirely happy with the picture I paint of the city in most of my books – rainy, dark and dangerous (at least to some of the characters). But I know that tourists travel from UK, from France, Germany and Denmark – even the USA – to walk in the streets of Varg Veum… ‘Down these mean streets a man must go…’ as Raymond Chandler wrote about his own detective, Philip Marlowe. And Varg Veum is, without doubt, a Norwegian cousin of both Marlowe and Lew Archer, the detective in Ross Macdonald’s books.

But of course the image is much darker in a crime novel than in reality. The same law rules for real-life Edinburgh and the one you meet in Ian Rankin’s crime novels. Or whatever city in which you find your detective.

Gunnar Staalesen & Varg Veum

There is a relationship between detectives and their cities, and that started – I believe – with London in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. When reading these stories, we get a vivid image of a foggy, dark and Victorian city, not as detailed as in the books of Charles Dickens perhaps, but fascinating enough.

To give just a few examples, the tradition continued with Dashiell Hammett’s The Continental Op and later on Sam Spade in San Francisco, Maigret in Paris, Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer in LA, Martin Beck in Stockholm, John Rebus in Edinburgh and Pepe Carvalho in Barcelona. When I wrote my first Varg Veum novel, published in Norway in 1977, I took a humble place in this tradition. And that is why the city Bergen plays an important role in my writing. (I have also written a very popular trilogy about the city, published in Norway, Denmark and France, which takes the reader through all the whole of the 20th century, from the night that a murder was committed on 1 January 1900 to the day that it is solved – by Varg Veum – on 31 December 1999. In Norway the series is very often referred to as “The Bergen trilogy”, in French “Le roman de Bergen”.)

So what and where is Bergen?

Bergen is the second largest city in Norway, with c. 250,000 inhabitants today. It was the unofficial capital of Norway in the 12th and 13th centuries, before the country experienced 400 years of governance by Denmark and almost 100 years in union with Sweden. It was not until 1905 that Norway became an independent nation again, and this is why so many Norwegians were – and still are – sceptical of joining the European Union.

Ian Rankin and Antti Tuomainen in front of Varg Veum’s street.

Bergen is situated on the West coast, a beautiful city surrounded by between six and nine mountains (the traditional count is seven, a holy number), and the tourist office calls it ‘The gateway to the fjords’, which is correct. There is a fjord leading you to the good harbour in Bergen – the reason why the city is situated just here – and you are not far from the two longest fjords in Norway, the Hardanger fjord and the Sogn and Fjordane fjord. In the tourist season the city is more or less packed with tourists. In the autumn, winter and early spring – when most of the Varg Veum novels take place – it is a rainy city, and the inhabitants love it when a new record of rainfall pro anno is reached. (The latest one was set in 2015, but I won’t not tell you what it was…)

Not a bad city for a private detective, or…?

Where Roses Never Die, by Gunnar Staalesen (Orenda Books) translated by Don Bartlett, is out now.

September 1977. Mette Misvær, a three-year-old girl, disappears without trace from the sandpit outside her home. Her tiny, close, middle-class community in the tranquil suburb of Nordas is devastated, but their enquiries and the police produce nothing. Curtains twitch, suspicions are raised, but Mette is never found. Almost 25 years later, as the expiry date for the statute of limitations draws near, Mette’s mother approaches PI Varg Veum, in a last, desperate attempt to find out what happened to her daughter. As Veum starts to dig, he uncovers an intricate web of secrets, lies and shocking events that have been methodically concealed. When another brutal incident takes place, a pattern begins to emerge …

Cults, Brain Hacking, and Conjoined Twins: The Influences in False Hearts

I like to smoosh together varied elements that interest me into books. It keeps things fresh for me and hopefully keeps things interesting for readers. My earlier books, Pantomime and Shadowplay, feature subjects like the circus, stage magicians, gender and sexuality, and the line between magic and technology. My next book, False Hearts, ended up shifting away pretty drastically from young adult fantasy to near future thriller, and had different influences: future tech, neuroscience, conjoined twins, cults, the mob, and more.

The book idea was sparked by reading an article on io9 about Violet and Daisy Hilton, conjoined twins famous in the vaudeville era. They did a film in the 50s called Chained for Life, where one twin is accused of killing her sister’s boyfriend and the other is implicated as well, by virtue of being attached to her sister. A clip was embedded in the article. I started thinking about how close twins’ bonds can, how some develop their own language and understand each other in a way no one else can. How much closer that bond might be as a conjoined twin, by virtue of you never having any privacy. I started researching more about various conjoined twins. I kept thinking: how would you feel when someone you think you know better than yourself has a secret from you, and it’s something like murder? How far would you go to find out the truth? Taema and Tila were a result.

False Hearts is set in San Francisco about a hundred years from now. The United States has fractured as a result of tension from climate change, and so the west coast is now Pacifica. At first glance, this near future has a lot to offer. Poverty is pretty much eradicated, there have been no major wars in years. Everything is recycled and San Francisco is an ecotopia. Thanks to gene therapy and walk-in flesh parlours, everyone looks perpetually young and beautiful. Crime is stopped through the widespread use of the drug, Zeal, and any criminals found are frozen in stasis. A few remain in the underground mob, the Ratel, which Pacifica is doing all in its power to eradicate. Things in this future are darker beneath the surface, and the future is no utopia.

My twins, however, have not been raised in this world, but a cult just on the outskirts that also pretends to be more perfect than it is. Part of the book follows this period of their lives. Taema and Tila have not been around any technology invented past 1969, and to change themselves in anyway is considered sacrosanct. Even if that means letting both twins die from a failing heart. They know they need to escape, but the leader of the cult won’t let them go so easily.  

There are a lot of elements in the book, and they combine in a way I love. There’s futuristic

elements because I love to world build and research as a result of my fantasy background, but the core story is all thriller: the ultimate crime of murder, and a sister who would do anything to find what her twin has done.  

False Hearts by Laura Lam.  Pan Macmillan, June 16, 2016 Hbk £12.99

To save her twin, she must take her identity. One night Tila stumbles home, terrified and covered in blood. She's then arrested for murder, the first by a civilian in decades. The San Francisco police suspect involvement with Verve, a powerful drug, and offer her twin sister Taema a chilling deal. Taema must assume Tila's identity and gather information to bring down the drug syndicate. The police may then let her sister live. However, Taema's investigation raises ghosts from the twins' past. The sisters were raised by a cult, which banned modern medicine - yet as conjoined twins, they needed life-saving surgery to replace their failing heart. And with help from co-conspirators, they escaped. Taema now discovers that Tila had found links between the cult and the city's criminal underworld. The twins were once unable to keep secrets, but will learn the true cost of lies.

You can find more information about Laura Lam and her work on her website.
Follow her on Twitter @LR_Lam and on Facebook.

Books to Look Forward to from Faber and Faber

July

The Girl in Green takes us deep into heart of Iraq, as British journalist Thomas Benton is persuaded by ex-US soldier Arwood Hobbes, and supported by relief worker Marta Strom, to embark on what may be a fools' errand, as they try to atone for their failure to save a local girl over twenty years previously, after Operation Desert Storm. Timely and telling - 2016 marks the 25th anniversary of the Gulf War and is election year in the U.S. - The Girl in Green explores the troubled landscape of the Middle East, and the West's foreign policy agenda, with all the wit, skill and insight of his acclaimed first novel.  The Girl in Green is by Derek B Miller.

Wilde Lake is by Laura Lippman. ‘Lu' Brant is the newly elected - and

first female - state's attorney of Howard County, Maryland, a job in which her revered father famously served. Fiercely intelligent and ambitious, she sees an opportunity to make her name by trying a mentally disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death in her home. As Lu prepares for the trial, the case dredges up painful memories, reminding her small but tight-knit family of the night when her brother, AJ, saved his best friend at the cost of another man's life. Only eighteen, AJ was cleared by a grand jury. Now, Lu wonders if the events of 1980 happened as she remembers them. What details might have been withheld from her when she was a child? The more she learns about the case, the more questions arise. Propelled into the past, she discovers that the legal system, the bedrock of her entire life, does not have all the answers and that the truth might be a dangerous thing to learn.

August

And now I stood here, on a desolate airfield in the Arkansas wilderness, a stone's throw from Texarkana. Darkness drawing in on me. Cross country to see a man I never imagined seeing again. On the strength of one desperate telephone call...' Having left Texarkana for the safety of the West Coast, reporter Charlie Yates finds himself drawn back to the South, to Hot Springs, Arkansas, as an old acquaintance asks for his help. This time it's less of a story Charlie's chasing, more of a desperate attempt to do the right thing before it's too late.  Black Night Falling is by Rod Reynolds

The Other Widow is by Susan Crawford.  'We have to stop seeing

each other ...  It isn't safe. For us.' He turns toward her, and even in the darkened car she sees his fear. The affair is over. Moments later, Joe's car skids off an icy road. Desperate to keep her life intact, Dorrie runs from the wreckage - but now someone is calling her from his phone. Joe's wife knew he was cheating. On her own in the wake of his death, Karen can't shake the feeling that someone is watching her. Investigator Maggie Brennan is immediately suspicious of the life insurance claim following the crash. The policy was a recent purchase, and she doesn't believe in coincidences. As the fates of these three women become more tightly entwined, they're brought closer to a terrifying truth.

September

A Deadly Thaw is by Sarah Ward.  2004: In Bampton, Derbyshire, Lena Fisher is arrested for suffocating her husband, Andrew. Spring 2016: A year after Lena's release from prison, Andrew is found murdered in a disused mortuary. Who was the man Lena killed twelve years ago and why did she lie about his identity? When Lena disappears, her sister, Kat, follows a trail of clues delivered by a teenage boy.

  

October

The Mistletoe Murders is by P D James.  As the acknowledged 'Queen of Crime', P. D. James was frequently commissioned by newspapers and magazines to write a special short story for Christmas. Four of the best of these have been drawn from the archives and published here. P. D. James' prose illuminates each of these perfectly formed stories, making them ideal reading for the darkest days of the year. While she delights in the secrets that lurk beneath the surface at family gatherings, her Christmas stories also provide tantalizing puzzles to keep the reader guessing. P. D. James embraces the challenge of the short-story form, and ingeniously weaves the strands of plot, setting, characterisation and surprise to create a satisfying whole within only a few thousand words. From the title story about a strained country-house party on Christmas Eve, to another about an illicit affair that ends in murder, and two cases for James' poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh.

November

Sitting in the departure lounge of Kirkwall Airport, Finn Sullivan just wants to get off Orkney. But then he meets the mysterious and dangerous Maddie Pierce, stepping in to save her from some unwanted attention, and his life is changed forever. Set against the brutal, unforgiving landscape of Orkney, Crash Land is by Doug Johnston and is a psychological thriller steeped in guilt, shame, lust, deception and murder.

Kitty Peck and the Daughter of Sorrow is by Kate Griffin. Summer 1881: the streets of Limehouse are thick with opium...and menace. At eighteen Kitty Peck has inherited Paradise, a sprawling criminal empire on the banks of the Thames. Determined to do things differently to her fearsome grandmother, she now realises that the past casts a long and treacherous shadow. Haunted by a terrible secret and stalked by a criminal cabal intent on humiliation and destruction, Kitty must fight for the future of everyone she cares for...